I Take This Woman by Jajinder Singh Bedi: Goodreads Review
I Take This Woman by Rajinder Singh Bedi.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
I find it a bit odd to review a novel that was written more than fifty years ago. But I feel the effort is worthwhile even if it inspires just one person to read this classic novel by the award-winning Urdu writer Rajinder Singh Bedi.
I Take this Woman (Ek Chadar Malli Si) is a gripping story of rural life in pre-Partition Punjab. In the 122 pages of the excellent English translation by Kushwant Singh, the author has distilled — like nectar — the essence of what married life is like for a poor, young married woman caught in the dreadful web of a hostile, extended family in rural India. Some of the characters are clichéic (e.g., the hard-drinking, violent husband; the evil mother-in-law), but this is compensated by the careful portrayal of the main character, Rano, whose life seems to go from bad to worse.
The plot is relatively simple. When Rano’s useless husband is murdered after a shameless act that results in the rape and death of an innocent pilgrim girl, Rano is pressured by friends and the village elders to marry the much younger brother of her husband, whom she nursed as a child. Rano is a hard-working woman who loves and tries to protect her four children, despite the bile she endures from her mother-in-law. But for the poor, unloved widow, no good deed goes unpunished.
The violence she endures from her first husband, which is met with bites and other acts of aggression, reminded me of the real-life stories cited in the works of Freudian psychiatrist Sudhir Kakar. And yet, even in this world of extreme hardship, there are moments when a character shows some genuine tenderness, feels remorse, or sings a verse from a Sufi poet. Moreover, there are a few young characters who manage to maintain their innocence, which lightens the heavy mood from time to time. Occasionally, emotional relief comes from nature, as when, “A strong breeze blew from beyond the hills. It brought with it flocks of migratory birds from distant lands — from the Siberian marshes, the mountains of the Caucauses, the plateux of the Palmirs and the peaks of the Sulaiman range.”
Sometimes, the reader is given a taste of prose that is truly poetic. The novel’s opening sentence is a good example, foreshadowing death with the lovely image of a blood-red sunset. “The sun was deeper red; the heavens were a darker crimson as if spattered with the blood of innocents: the stream of blood ran from the sky down into Tiloka’s [Rano’s husband’s] courtyard, tinting the green of the bakain with hues of purple.”
Bedi’s narrator is omniscient, and I found it sometimes jarring when the point of view abruptly switches from one character to another. But this was a small price to pay for a novel that is emotionally gripping, as well as illuminating. Bedi’s masterpiece is a raw portrayal of human misery on a truly personal level. But the emotional weight of the story is leavened by an unpretentious style sprinkled with just the right amount of ornamentation to keep even the most demanding reader engaged.